A few days after the city tagged the vehicle as abandoned, my wife called me at work. It was apparently owned by the people in the house. It was also apparently disabled, because her teenage son and a couple of his friends were outside pushing it up out of the road ...

... and into the front yard.

Seriously? Are you just trying to fulfill every stereotype of Alabama? Maybe you should drag a sofa out there for good measure. Litter the yard with some Natural Light cans and a few dog pens. Still, it was out of the road and off public property. As far as I was concerned it was redneck as all hell, but was no longer in my way.

So this evening we were eating dinner and we hear a truck pull up out front of the house. I go to the front window and look.

It was a tow truck. But not a nice one like the city would hire. It's like a 30 year old tow struck. No labels on the side. It looked like just something a derpy Alabama redneck in overalls would drive. They talked for a few minutes, then he hooked the car up and towed it away.

I really did not want to make a big deal about it. I tried to talk to them about it, but no one ever answered the door. I just have to wonder: if I hadn't called the city, how long would they have let that car sit there in the road?

So there's been this Lincoln Mark VIII parked in the road across the street from me. It's been in the same spot for more than three months. The whole time, the windows have been down (keeping in mind that it's springtime in Huntsville - we've probably had several inches of rain in that period). The rear end of the car is also practically on the ground - the tops of the wheels are buried in the wheel wells. I can't tell if this is some new fad or something, but it looks broken to me.

For the first couple of months, it had a license plate, because I looked closely at it one day and made a note that the plate expired in June. Interestingly enough, a few days later, the plate surreptitiously disappeared from the back of the car...

Now, I really don't want to make a big deal out of this, but it looks trashy. This neighborhood is hardly wealthy, but it is solidly middle class. I really don't want it to slide down into some redneck hovel with people having broken cars on their lawns. Hell, I wouldn't even care if it was sitting in a driveway. But it has sat in a public roadway for months without moving.

I've tried to talk to my neighbor about it, but every time I've knocked on her door, no one answers. So, unfortunately, today, I had to escalate the problem. I called the city code enforcement office and filed a complaint.

One benefit of living in this area: they seem to take code enforcement fucking seriously. By the time I got home this afternoon, the car already had a little orange "abandoned vehicle" sticker on it.

Now, I don't know how long until they tow it. I don't want to attract attention by looking at the sticker, and they don't say what the city statutes may cover it. The state law says they have not less than seven days. So, hopefully, sometime in the next week, the eyesore will be gone.